All together now ... 'Smelly cat, smelly cat, what are they feeding you?' Photograph: PR

Name: Emmy the Great

Where and when: Festival Republic stage, Sunday, 4.35pm, Reading

Dress code: The violinist is wearing a knitted tank top, which kind of tells you all you need to know about this show.

Who's watching: There's a day of skull-crunching metal on the main stage, and mind-mangling beats on the dance stage – for those of asensitive disposition, Emmy's show is the only retreat.

In a nutshell: As the other stages reverberate with the message Bass, How Low Can You Go?, Emmy is offering up the philosophical question Acoustic Guitars, How Twee Can You Be? The whole show is a battlebetween embracing her neat ditties on messy love and feeling a bit nauseous at the sheer limpness of it all.

Emmy is clearly talented. Her voice is beautiful, her melodies are sublime and at one point we start to mentally compare her to Joni Mitchell circa Blue. But then we hear someone say, "She sounds like Phoebe from Friends", and it takes a lot of effort to watch the rest of the show without shouting out for a rendition of Smelly Cat.

High point: Emmy's tale of her first Reading festival, aged 17: "I woke up in a stranger's tent. The next day I found out that my friends had sold me for a gram of Ketamine."

Low point: It's a fine line between leaving the crowd wanting more or wanting MOR.

How hard does she rock?: You are joking, right?

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